After two weeks without finding any gf products in Turkey I was all out of breaky cereal and keen to get to Italy.  Normally Italian food is the worst for gf (pasta and pizza etc) but Italy had a reputation as a gf aware country with many restaurants providing gf options.  My main concern was that staying on the car-less Venice islands we would be isolated from larger supermarkets or gf food suppliers.  As it turned out this was not the case as we had fortuitously booked an apartment only a minute or two from the main Billa supermarket and, even better, only a hundred metres from the Mea Libera Tutti shop that only sells gf food.

Part of Venice map with Billa supermarket and Mea Libera Tutti shop marked

Mea Libera Tutti is a small shop packed with gf goodies, including multiple brands of pasta.  The owners have a son with Coeliac and quickly tired of all-day shopping trips to the mainland to get gf supplies.  So they opened their own shop.  Prices were quite reasonable, considering the location, and the friendly, English-speaking owners also can advise about local restaurants.

GF goodies galore

Shops, hotels and homes in Venice are all numbered based on when they were built, not sequentially down each calle (street/laneway).  Mea is no 3803 in the Cannaregio district.

Any Coeliacs visiting Venice and looking for an apartment with a fully fitted out kitchen could do worse than stay at Ca d’Oro apartment in Calle Zotti number 3889 which we booked via http://www.vrbo.com  The only shortcoming was that the apartment was a fair way from the central tourist areas and even further from the orienteering event centre/starts.  However lots of walking equals more excuse for gf gluttony!

As with France and Turkey we only had time to visit smaller convenience supermarkets in Venice and Rome and never made it to any larger suburban malls.  But the Italian supermarkets we visited did stock gf products, often home-branded.  In Italy some of the “normal” food that is naturally gf had “senza glutine” (gf) labelling.  Unfortunately in Australia this rarely happens with many food products labelled as “may contain traces of gluten” which is extremely annoying as you don’t know if this is true or the lawyers just put it on in case a worker dropped his lunch crumbs on the production line or something.

Another annoyance at home is when a favourite gf product disappears.  Even worse is when it later reappears as part of a supermarket homebrand range at an inflated new price.  Woolworths “Macro” range advertises itself as “offer(ing) great tasting, nutritionally sound and quality products at an affordable price” but this seems a farce when your favourite gf biscuits are repackaged as part of the Macro range and the price inexplicably goes up by quite a significant amount – affordable indeed!  With Coles now sponsoring the Coeliac Society in Australia, I suggest that “the fresh food people” need to lift their game rather than alienate customers.

With all these options we had no trouble cooking in Venice and I was able to try a few products we don’t usually see at home such as profiteroles and ice-cream biscuits.  We visited one restaurant in Venice, L’Osteria All’Ombra which I would describe as cheap-and-cheerful.  I had a gf pizza in the Italian style (thin crust with few toppings).  The (A La)Vecia Cavana restaurant had also been recommended for Coeliacs but we did not get there.

Once in Rome we couldn’t cook any more so we visited a near-by eatery, Donati, for dinner.  They produced excellent pasta dishes both gf and “normal” and this completed my run of eating out with no gluten poisoning that I could attribute to a restaurant meal.  I also got my gf meals going home on Emirates so they get a big tick again and I survived the whole trip without having to dip into my “emergency” rations very often at all.  Having to hunt down gf food does detract from the freedom that other tourists enjoy and ‘eats’ into your free time when travelling.  I would return to Italy again and France, if I wanted to, but not Turkey or any other non-English speaking region that does not have locally-made gf food products commonly available in their supermarkets.

Ian